I just saw the email about the PyData conference in NYC in November. Could y’all tell me more about who attends and the conference goals. I’m trying to identify the most appropriate role for me (as and individual) and for the Astropy Project.

Hi Kelle! The videos from past PyData are online: https://www.youtube.com/user/PyDataTV but to be honest, as an astronomer, I have found the talks to be hugely interesting but often not as directly applicable to my own work (which is a function of what I work on, not a comment on the overwhelmingly positive level of quality of the talks). Your mileage may vary, but the ones I’ve been to usually have a strong focus on machine learning, streaming data analysis, applications of these things to industry processes, and so on. But, I’ve also seen some really rad talks about new tools, concepts around metadata harvesting and mining, and so on.

I think astropy might be of interest to present on, but it might also be well-received to present about how astropy formed, and the inter-organizational alliances it forged and so on, which are relevant to some industry groups.

It’s worth noting that each PyData conference is organized locally, so you might have luck reaching out to the local organizers, or checking what has happened at past PyData NYC meetings, to see what they tend to focus on.

I just sent you an email, but I thought I’d respond here as well. We’re limiting the New York event to approximately ~250 attendees and it will definitely sell out. As for talks, we’re looking for proposals on every aspect of data science including machine learning, deep learning and AI, data visualization, and evelopment in languages used in data science (e.g. Python, R, Julia). I believe this particular event will have more tutorials/trainings than talks, which might give you a better sense of the audience. Like Matthew said, the PyDataTV channel is a great resource for past talks. I think it would be great to talk about AstroPy in some form or another. If you have more questions related to talk content, James Powell is our chair and a great resource. You can shoot him an email at james@numfocus.org.